<p>I got West or Atlanta or surfer girl…the No Accent accent.
Bingo! I am a military brat…in the south all my adult life but still a mystery lack of accent thanks to those four times in Atlanta, California, Ohio and Illinois and the formative years in Delaware.</p>
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<p>Is that a regional thing? I’ve mostly noticed it as difference between the sexes more than between regional accents, i.e. women do it more commonly than men. In fact, I’ve pointed it out to my daughters and advised them not raise the pitch of their voices at the end of all their sentences (unless they really are asking a question), because turning all their statements into questions will make them sound weak and uncertain.</p>
<p>Inland North with Northeast a shade behind, which is funny, because I’m definitely Western. Okay, but I lived in New Orleans, Texas, and Chicago as a kid.</p>
<p>If anything, I think of myself as speaking very precisely, e.g., “to,” not “tuh.”</p>
<p>And the later but increasingly common pronunciation of “Caribbean” makes me almost flinch.</p>
<p>After reading this thread I have but one observation: some of y’all talk funny.</p>
<p>“English language…why, in America, they haven’t spoken it for years.”
– H. Higgins</p>
<p>29% Dixie. I think that’s right.</p>
<p>The Inland North. Despite the fact that I have never been to Chicago, Wisconsin, or any of the other places they mentioned. Nor have I ever referred to “soda” as “pop.” Interesting… I have never been pegged as a New Englander.</p>
<p>I’m not a parent, but…</p>
<p>Apparently I have a Midland accent…I’m from CA.</p>
<p>Midland. Probably because I’ve lived on the east coast and in Michigan. But, within 15 minutes of talking to you, I’ll start to have YOUR accent. I try very hard not to do that; I’m concerned that people may think I’m mocking them!</p>
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<p>“There is no such thing as “the Queen’s English.” The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!”
– Mark Twain</p>
<p>I got midlander, too, despite my upper midwest upbrininging and “accented” parents. I have been having fun the past few years though listening to Pittsburgh and NYC accents in my own children. Funny, because the oldest 2 have the NYC, their birthplaces, the youngest a Pittsburgh accent (slight), and the kids in the middle are all midlanders. </p>
<p>Maybe they learn their accents in the womb.</p>
<p>My parents were from PA, fencersmother, Mom was from Pittsburgh. Does your student say “yu’uns?” or maybe it’s you-uns.</p>
<p>The West? That’s an accent? Interesting, Tennessee hasn’t ruined me. And I guess I can live in California now.</p>
<p>Both of my kids got Midland accents to my Northeastern! They’ve been diluted!! The only real difference between them and me, though, is that they don’t pronounce as much of a difference between words like don and dawn, stock and stalk, collar and caller as I do, but in reality it’s really only a tiny difference between us - you’d have to be listening carefully.</p>
<p>Inland North for me. Pretty spot on.
People always say the WNY accent is similar to Chicago’s.
Then again the only accent I can distinguish is a southern one.</p>
<p>Fun littel sur5veys!
Both got me as a NEasterner (NY) though I have officially lives outside of the NE longer than I lived inside it.
My fresh yr rmmate pronounces “party” as “potty” and “potty” as “pawtty”. Any guesss where she was from?</p>
<p>Hint-- pajamas were pronounce “pi-jammas” and “drawer” was “draw”</p>
<p>Binx,
Sorry I’ve been slow to reply. My husband hogged the computer yesterday, so I did not do CC at all. </p>
<p>To get an idea of how I say awe, open your mouth in an oval shape, drop your jaw, then say then say a short O sound. I think the O sound would be much as one would say in the word or, but without the R sound. For me, the pronunciation of ahh seems to come from the back of the throat whereas the pronunciation of awe is more toward the front of the mouth. I also notice that when I say ahh, my mouth is in a relaxed shape; there’s no O shape in the lips. Are there any linguists or speech therapists out there? I’m sure they could explain the difference in the sounds far better than I. In any case, no one where I live would think I was singing law, law, law if I forgot the lyrics to a song. It’s definitely la, la, la 
The two words sound very different in my part of the country.</p>
<p>Midland for me. I’m not surprised, since I was a military brat and really never called any one place home. Dad was a Southerner, Mom a New Englander, but I don’t sound like either of them. Mom doesn’t have an accent anymore, either – probably because she left New England when she was 17. Guess we’re generic. My kids, however, have a very slight Southern twang after living in FL since '94. . .</p>
<p>Law and la sound different to me, too. Awe and ah both rhyme with law, though. The a in Law, awe, and ah sounds like the o in long. Whereas ‘la’ rhymes with ‘the’ (NOT said like thee) or like the article “a” - as in “gimme a piece”.</p>
<p>I’ve always been fascinated with Henry Higgens in My Fair Lady - how he can tell not only where a person lives, but where a person has lived, by their accents.</p>
<p>I suppose we could transcribe your pronunciation of la as luh. When I say la it does not rhyme with “the” or with “a”; it’s not even close :). For me, la rhymes with the fa in father and the so in sod. The vowel sound I use in ahh and la would come close to matching the French pronunciation of the vowel in the word France.</p>
<p>I too find it interesting that linguists can tell where we have lived by the way we speak. I do, however, think that it can’t be done with 100% accuracy because we humans sometimes purposely modify the way we speak. For example, when I was a child I pronounced the word “egg” with a long A sound. That’s how my mom and all of her family pronounced the word. They are of German descent (I don’t know if that has any bearing or not) and are natives of Louisville, KY. At some point during my youth I noted that others pronounced the word “egg” with a short E sound. I consciously decided to modify the way I pronounced the word. I have found it interesting to note that I’ve heard some older adults in Cincinnati pronounce egg the same way as my mom. I’ve never heard a young person in this area pronounce it with a long A sound. I have always wondered if the non-standard pronunciation was something that was common in German immigrant families or if it was something that was simply common among Ohio River valley natives in the past.</p>
<p>I say egg with a longish A sound. The short e sounds “country” to my ears. I grew up surrounded by immigrants, but my H says it the same way, and he didn’t. (I’d love to hear a tape of how we sounded when we first met - how has our speech changed? I know I didn’t used to think we sounded alike, but now I think we do.)</p>
<p>I know a lot of foreign languages pronounce e as a long A. Like Spanish. Italian. And German, and some other European languages I think. So your conjecture might be accurate.</p>
<p>Luh works for how I say it ‘la’. But the ‘father’ and ‘sod’ examples would have the same vowel sound as “law” to me, so I’m not getting how you say it yet.</p>
<p>Jym - where was your roommie from? Alabama? or Boston? (I get those two mixed up. )</p>
<p>Funny! 
- I got The South with Midland being a very close second. I was born in Chicago but have lived in the Inland Northwest for the last 23 years. Both of my parents were from the south. Momma is from Montgomery and Daddy was from Plaquemine.</p>
<p>Most people think I have a flat midwestern accent. </p>
<p>How do you say “water”?</p>